


Fish Glue and String

by Kathar



Series: Double Header [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Growing Old Together, M/M, Phil is always plotting something, Relationship Negotiation, Retirement, gratuitous use of baseball metaphors, sneaky Clint is sneaky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:42:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Time for Hawkeye the Avenger, Earth's Creakiest Hero, to hang up the bow and call it a day.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Neither of them thought they’d live to see retirement, but here they both are. Clint’s retired, and Phil… Phil has a plan for him. It’s a good plan, if he does say so himself. If only Clint Barton believed in plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fish Glue and String

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faeleverte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/gifts).



> This was intended to be a story in two chapters, a Christmas present for my braintwin Faeleverte. One chapter made it to her on time, though it showed up scruffy and un-beta’d. This is that chapter, now spruced up and a stand-alone story. The other chapter-- now a separate story-- ~~will be following along on an appropriate date~~ can be found here: [Wave Me Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1182090). 
> 
> Fae, our collaboration and friendship is one of the unexpected blessings of this past year. Thanks for betaing your own gift fic, and enjoy (again). We're gonna need it.
> 
> To Beta J, as always, my gratitude for betaing duties in the middle of a whole host of other stresses, including those piled on you by your damned sister.

It wasn't any catastrophic event: no career-ending injury, no amputated limb. It was the accumulation of little (and not-so-little) wounds: fractures, raw sockets, archer's shoulder, the ever-so-sexy carpal tunnel syndrome, and a host of other complaints. It was the slow accretion of aches and pains, the step more, the second longer. It was entropy that got him.

Clint didn't tell Steve; it would have hurt too badly. Steve would have done his best, would have been gracious and well-meaning... and he would have sat there, perpetually youthful, never aching in the morning just from waking up, while trying to be _understanding._ Captain America radiating awkward sympathy was not what Clint wanted to see in front of him for this conversation. 

If that hurt Steve, well... not his problem anymore.

So Clint told Tony. Tony who was still Iron Man despite the gray at his temples and his own little aches and tics, carefully compensated for by ever more bleeding-edge suits. 

Clint had never had the suits to fall back on, just the bleeding.

Tony had it all planned out, too, and that told Clint it was time more than anything else. _Don't be a stranger, man. What do you think? Mentor the next generation? You did better with Bishop than anyone else could have. You haven't strangled Parker yet-- don't tell me he's not still a kid. Can't leave this all to Cap; you know he's shit with teens._

(And god, was he.)

Anyway, Tony could always use someone to review his countersurveillance at SI and the Mansion. What with that and about five other things, Clint was going to be much busier than he'd anticipated.

Tony, who always had the future mapped out before anyone else had quite figured out the present, had seen this one coming a mile away. He'd probably talked to Cap about it, and Natasha too. It was annoying as fuck, but it was also... exactly what Clint realized he needed now.

Retirement.

Time for Hawkeye the Avenger, Earth's Creakiest Hero, to hang up the bow and call it a day.  
_____

Truthfully, he hadn't actually expected to make it to retirement. Sure, other agents might live to ripe old age and start using those pensions or 401(k)s, but Phil knew the kind of man he was. Long before SHIELD was even a gleam in his eye, when he first put in for Ranger training, Phil Coulson had made his choice.

It wasn't the kind of choice you usually lived with to a ripe old age-- and he hadn’t.

He had, in fact, died. He'd just... gotten better.

"Better" didn’t mean ageless though. Somehow, against all expectation, Phil had survived the Rangers, the life of a field agent in SHIELD, and Strike Team Delta doing their best to give him a heart attack when not getting him shot at. He’d survived death-by-Loki and revival-by-SHIELD. Years of trundling around the world in a Bus with another cardiac arrest-inducing team hadn’t finished him either. Finally, with a show of great reluctance, he’d left the field a few years back. 

Not that long after, he'd retired from SHIELD altogether. Turned out he did find a desk job a worse fate than death.

Oh, he kept his hand in, of course. He taught at the SHIELD academy and the FBI academy-- and even West Point from time to time. 

He still worked with SHIELD-- on a consultancy basis. 

That paid one hell of a lot more than being employed by them ever had.

It also gave him the freedom to consult for other agencies, both foreign and domestic, even unto SWORD. The last time (of many) that Hawkeye had gone into _outer friggin' space, Phil,_ it had been on an orbiting station where the personnel recruitment and training had been overseen by Phil.

It was the least he could have done. 

As it turned out, too, Phil actually enjoyed free time when he wasn't exhausted from missions. He joined a vintage Corvette owners' club, toured with them at least once a month, and made the mistake of offering to moderate their online forums. Volunteered at a couple of places Captain Rogers recommended. Went to concerts, ate out when he liked, went running every day-- often with one old friend or another in tow. 

So the truth was that Phil was enjoying the hell out of retirement.

It looked good on him.

And he was going to make damn sure that it looked good on Clint Barton, too.

_____

Clint had never really expected to survive long enough to make retirement worth planning for. 

“If I make it to thirty-seven alive sir, it’ll be a fucking miracle," he'd told Phil once, way back in the old days before everything had changed. 

They’d actually started out talking baseball. Clint’d been perched in a tree at the time with his sniper rifle. The spot was not exactly comfortable, kinda boring really, and he distracted himself by reading the sports scores off the newspaper Phil-- Coulson still, back then-- was holding. It was indicative of their relationship that Clint couldn't resist getting on his CO's nerves by dissing the Cubs. 

He’d done his best to piss the guy off, and in response Phil had promised to get him to thirty-seven alive. He'd done it, too-- Clint had turned thirty-seven in the middle of an undercover op in Quito over a decade ago. It still surprised him that he’d made it at all. It surprised him more how much he was looking forward to what came next.

He sighed as he headed back to the apartment in Bed-Stuy, greeting Simone's youngest in the hall (what was it, a couple-few years till graduation? More? Less? He'd have to remind Phil to remind him about a scholarship or somethin'.) He let himself in, did his usual pass with his hand over the hook Lucky's leash used to hang from, and looked around.

When he'd first moved in here, in the wake of the Battle of New York, in the wake of _everything_ , it had been a hidey-hole for his shattered soul. He'd paid for that sanctuary several times over in money, sweat, blood, and heartache. Sometime, though-- and nevermind when-- sometime when he wasn't looking it had gone from solitary to lonely.

He looked around, sat down on his barstool, closed his eyes.

_____

He’d never expected them to get here, Phil thought as he waved goodbye to Deputy Director Hand when he left SHIELD in the late afternoon and sauntered (okay-- limped. Slightly. Nearly invisibly) to the subway station. 

Long ago, when they were both bored waiting for a contact and exchanging the near-ritual banter that had, even then, grounded Phil in ways he didn’t think Clint had ever guessed, Clint had flippantly mentioned he hadn’t figured he’d live till thirty-seven. 

“I’ll make damn sure you get to thirty-seven, Barton,” Phil had muttered, not expecting Clint to hear him.

“Course you will, sir, if only so you can tell me you told me so,” Clint had responded, as easy as if they were still talking about decrepit pitchers.

Phil’d realized he had no choice after that remark but to seduce the man. He still didn’t think he’d live to retirement, he couldn’t offer Clint anything except his friendship and his body, but he’d offered that and never regretted it or his promise.

So here he was and here Clint was, against all probability. Sometime along the way “I’ll make sure you get to thirty-seven” had changed meaning for Phil. Originally it had meant “I’ll make sure you get out of this alive.” Now it meant “I’ll make sure you have a life after you get out of this.”

The first step was to get Clint through the next week or so while it all sunk in. It would be best to invite him over to Phil’s apartment then try to keep him distracted for a while.

Keeping him distracted was going to be harder than it once would have been. Phil didn't have his youthful stamina anymore, sadly-- but then neither did Clint. The clicks and pops and groans that Clint emitted in the mornings had increased exponentially in the last few years. Neither of them had been able to manage more than twice in any given night for several years. And twice was reserved for extra-special "you just got back from outer space alive" situations and required considerable recovery time afterwards. 

Still, a combination of good food, good alcohol, tickets to a couple ball games, a tricky consultation with the UN Intelligence Taskforce that could use a second eye, and good sex should keep his Hawkeye distracted. (Especially the sex.)

Once Clint had gotten into the swing of early retirement, and before he got anxious to be back in his own apartment, the hard part would begin. Phil had that divided into several neat steps:

1) Tell Clint he loved him. Find out if mutual.

Okay so, after a length of years that could be counted in decades, it was reasonable that others assumed this had already happened. And it had: during sex, of course, and near-death experiences once or twice. In rational times, the "L" word had been a particularly nasty sort of conversational bomb that each of them avoided. It wasn't that he hadn't realized he loved Clint, or that the feeling was-- probably, hopefully-- returned. It was that saying "I love you" implied levels of commitment that Phil couldn't in good faith give to anything but the job.

Clint Barton understood that better than anyone else could ever have hoped to. That was one of the many reasons Phil li... loved him.

2) Close relationship.

In their early days the Thing between them had been largely sexual, when it wasn't busy being one of the highest-performing partnerships at SHIELD. Said Thing had been founded in trust and attraction. Friendship and a deep mutual reliance had been added to the mix long ago. Monogamy certainly hadn't been. 

Hell, Clint had even married once. Briefly. Phil had been particularly absent during those years-- the Bus team had spent maybe ten nights at home all that year, if he'd recalled, and only thirteen the next. At some point in there, Clint had met, married, and divorced Bobbi. He and Phil hadn't broken up in that there'd been nothing official to break, but those were not years either of them discussed much. The time just after his death and Clint’s brainwashing were still too painful to poke at often. (And it wasn't like Phil had much to say to it-- Clint had betrayed no trust, and Phil, after all, had Portland. Fair's fair.)

For two people who'd never broken up, they had come back together pretty spectacularly, if wordlessly. There'd never again been an outside _romantic_ interest for either. Life was too damn busy for other relationships. Phil's never-that-exciting sex life had narrowed down to Only Clint by the time he retired, and he was pretty sure Clint's had, too. Pretty sure. Now that Clint was grounded as well, there was no reason not to (and every reason to) button things up. Especially since step 3 was:

3) Consolidate housekeeping. 

They'd lived _nearly_ together sometimes, especially at SHIELD itself. And then sometimes not. Given how frequently they both travelled or were gone, trying to maintain a shared living space would have been ludicrous: more like a timeshare than a home. Phil hoped Clint would be willing to give up the place in Bed-Stuy, though it hurt him to think of suggesting it. Clint had rooms at the Tower and the Mansion where everything was done for him, and yet called the somewhat unkempt loft home. He had responsibilities there, he had friends there, and Phil loved him for it. 

It was just... Phil's place was nicer. More convenient. And from time to time, equally Clint's home (if the socks he found in the couch cushions, under the bed, and on top of the bookshelf were any indication). 

Hopefully it could become so permanently. And that was another thing:

4) Um. Best not even to _breathe_ that one 'till Phil had at least made sure of Step 1.

Phil texted Clint an invitation as he headed in the door of the Lebanese place down the block from his apartment. The owner looked up and grinned as the bell jingled. Phil still, after all this time out of the field, had to fight down the prickle on the back of his neck at such instant recognition.

Recognition wasn't always bad. In this case, it meant falafels straight out of the fryer and a gratis tub of tabouli.

_____

Another thing Phil had yet to get used to was the growing uselessness of his immediate fight-or-flight response to finding someone in his apartment when he arrived home.

The conflicting urges became even more complicated when that someone was Clint and his bent ass was on full display, jeans underscoring every edible curve as he leant over a complicated mess of wires in front of Phil's entertainment center.

Phil was pretty sure he was never going to become used to that sight. And he might be biased-- he was definitely biased-- but it was a view that had only gotten better over the decades they'd known each other. An objective observer might have quibbled a bit, sure, but that was yet another reason he'd put such careful thought into his four-part post-retirement plans for Clint. His appreciation for that ass clearly went far beyond the aesthetic.

The take-out bags rustled gently as Phil dropped them on the counter in the pass-through window between the main room and the kitchen. Clint didn’t turn his head at that, nor at Phil’s footsteps behind him, which he deliberately made heavy. When Phil got within arm’s reach, however, Clint snaked an arm around his leg and reeled him in. He finished his wiring one-handed and looked up, grinning. 

Phil grinned back down, blushing as the heat from Clint’s smile radiated back at him. Every last little crinkle at Clint’s eyes or in the corners of his mouth or his forehead seemed to be conspiring to complete his transformation into a sexy gnome. It shouldn’t have looked as good on him as it did, but damn. DAMN.

“Hello,” Phil said, “this is a surprise.” 

Clint held up one finger then fiddled with something in his ear for a moment. Ah. Hearing aids were off, then.

That was… either a kind of awe-inspiring sign of trust in Phil and his security systems and his living space, or a somewhat disturbing sign of how he was going to handle retirement: i.e., badly.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Clint leered up at him, sliding his hand up the outside of Phil’s leg as he stood and obliterating any further thought with his lips.

Those lips, and the things they could do, had only gotten better over the years, too. Anyone who thought differently could stuff it. (That stood for anyone who claimed theoretical knowledge. Anyone with recent practical experience kissing Clint could go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.) 

"Should I be concerned about my entertainment system?" Phil asked after a while, pulling back just far enough to twist his head and look down at the mass of electronics on the floor. "In fact," he frowned, "is that even my entertainment system?"

"No," Clint said, sliding fond fingers into his back pocket and beginning to massage gently, "it's mine. Figured you wouldn't mind too much; the sound is better. I've had it long enough that if Tony'd rigged it to explode, it would have by now." Phil jumped at the minute squeeze that followed and was opening his mouth to say more when Clint pulled away, sniffing the air.

"Oh god, you got falafels. You do know how to treat a guy." He'd crossed the room and stuck his nose deep inside the waxed paper bag before Phil could speak. When the nose came back out a hand dove in. Clint popped a falafel into his mouth with a grin-- that quickly turned into a grimace and a race for the sink.

"Just out of the fryer" Phil drawled, watching him fan his mouth. "And I didn't know I was going to come home and find a guy to treat."

Clint rolled his eyes. 

"Af cawse oo dih, Phiw." Another gulp of water. "Or else you were gonna call me; you don't even like tabouli. Anyway, you weren't going to leave me alone my first night as a useless old coot, were you?"

Phil choked on air.

"Coot?" he managed after a moment. Clint was already rummaging around in the silverware drawer. He popped his head up.

"But _your_ coot," he grinned. He came out with forks in both fists and slid his arms around Phil's middle, drawing him close. "Held together by fish glue and string and good for nothing but screaming at kids to get off the damn lawn. Since you don't even have a lawn that's pretty useless but," he paused for a quick kiss, "I make up for it other ways."

"Oh, do you now?"

"Sure." Clint let him go. "I stopped at Zakia's too, and brought kofta kebabs." 

_____

He had, indeed, brought kofta kebabs. And pitas and olives and many other good things. They sat around Phil's tiny dining table, eating and drinking wine, while Clint told him about the conversation with Tony Stark.

“I told him I can’t feel too bad about it. God knows I outlasted all the relief pitchers in the MLB (the right-handed ones anyway) and a lot of superheroes with actual powers. Getting out alive was, well,” Clint smiled to himself, “a fuckin’ miracle. So then he picks up on the baseball thing and starts comparing me to fuckin’ Crash Davis or something, and talking about coaching and I kinda got lost in the comparison and came out of the meeting with about five different things to do. So now I'm actually kinda worried about having any down time," he said around a mouthful of olives along about the time they were finally sitting back and filling up the corners.

"Clint, since when have you ever known what to do with down time?" Phil asked, kicking him gently in the ankle. "You either get yourself into trouble or you spend too long at the range. You hate down time." He hated the idea of being profoundly grateful to Tony Stark, and there'd been many times over the years when he'd had occasion to test the reality of it. It prickled every time.

Clint shrugged.

"Yeah, but that was down time when I could have been out saving the world. I dunno." He broke off to play with his fork. "You seem to do okay. I mean, I never figured you as a guy who'd appreciate being out of the loop but you seem to be having fun."

Phil frowned. It was on the tip of his tongue to say he wasn't out of the loop-- as the afternoon's briefing with Victoria should have proved-- but he bit down on it. 

"I think I've gotten used to it," he said finally. "Or I just made my own loops to be in. It helped to keep busy for a while when I first did it. The transition was easier when I maintained some semblance of a normal schedule."

"Well, it'll keep me out from under your feet anyway," Clint said, staring down at the lone olive left on his plate.

Phil refrained from asking just how underfoot Clint planned to be, or assuring Clint he'd like him to be underfoot as much as possible, in favor of taking a careful breath and willing his voice to sound normal as he said:

"It gets better." He placed one hand over Clint's. "I can promise you that. At first you feel like there's nothing under your feet, but it gets better."

"Yeah, I've had nothing under my feet often enough; this isn't anything like that," Clint said, but he concentrated on twirling his empty wine glass between his fingers rather than meeting Phil's eyes for a moment. Finally, he set the glass down and laughed-- at himself, as far as Phil could tell. "Tell you what, though, maybe you better keep an extra eye on me this week. Really wine and dine me, you know? Keep me distracted. Just... in case." He leered up at Phil.

"Distracted, huh?" Phil said, grinning back at him while his interior self was flailing wildly on the edge of a cliff. "How do you propose to I should do that?"

_____

At first Phil thought his bookshelves looked off because he was staring at them upside down and his glasses had half fallen off his nose.

But then, he was paying much more attention to the fingers curling around up inside him, the way a single well-timed flick made his entire pelvis buck up and his knees shudder, his body entirely out of his control. Clint's breath was hot on Phil's thighs as he laughed.

Then Clint was in him, over him, covering him, moving with an intensity that demanded all of Phil's concentration. He tilted his head up and brought Clint's lips to his.

_____

There was a complete set of O'Brians on his bookshelf. This was unusual, given that half of them lived at Clint's apartment at any given time, and _The Wine Dark Sea_ had a near-permanent home in Clint's bathroom magazine rack. Phil's Brins and LeGuins and Ffordes and Fursts were mysteriously complete, too, and his Bujolds had cloned themselves. He seemed to have acquired some Hiaasens, and he was damn sure he'd never owned _Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates_ , or _The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven_ and what the everloving fuck was _To Marry a Marquis_ doing between _The King Must Die and Slaughterhouse Five_? 

There was also a longbow hanging above his bed. Phil hadn't been at the proper angle to see it earlier, and he'd been concentrating... elsewhere... when he'd come into his room earlier.

"Clint," he said cautiously as he sat up and tossed the last damp wipe in the wastebasket-- which suddenly seemed to have sprouted a toy basketball hoop on the rim. (And yes, thanks, he might not be the World's Greatest Marksman but he could still sink a wadded-up Wet One from across the room.) 

"Mmmmhrmphl?" Clint replied, muffled in the pillow he'd buried himself in once he'd finally rolled off Phil. 

"Clint, did you... have you... um... moved in?"

And if he hadn't what the hell had happened to Phil's apartment while he was gone? Interior decorating elves?

Clint lifted head up and propped it on his folded arms.

"Um, yeah?" he said, and confusion sat oddly with debauchery on his features. 

"Oh." Phil struggled to process this for a moment, because he knew he'd been distracted the entire afternoon but it really seemed a little much to have missed. "Were you going to let me know anytime soon?"

"I did," Clint was struggling to sit up now. "When you came home?"

 _When he came home_ \-- the simple use of that phrase blanked what was left of Phil's brain for a moment.

"Oh! The entertainment center," he said when he could think again.

"Yeah. I thought it was pretty obvious?"

"It... in retrospect, I suppose, yes." Phil looked around at his-- their-- room. "Do you have much more to bring?" he continued, because apart from the entertainment center he didn't remember much looking different in the living room. 

"Nah, my furniture's shit. I've got a few more boxes to unpack but everything's here." 

A creak and sway to the mattress was the only warning Phil had before Clint's arms came around his waist, his thighs bracketed Phil's, and his chin settled on Phil's shoulder.

"You all right, Phil? Was this too fast? You want to look for a new apartment together or something?"

"Ah--" Phil shook his head. "No, this is fine, this is great, this is what I wanted. I just...." He laughed as he thought about the four-part plan and all the time he'd spent worrying. "I just guessed I'd need to talk you into it, I suppose."

Clint pulled away far enough to look at Phil, and the look was one of his patented "the idiot in the room is probably me, but you're doing a damn good impression of it" faces.

"You did. You have been. Every day since you retired."

"I-- what?"

"Phil, babe, love of my life, did you think I was joking earlier? I like what you've done with retirement. It looks sexy on you. I want to be able to do what you're doing."

"So... wait," Phil pulled out of Clint's arms long enough to take a very hard look at him. "You're moving in so that I can be your retirement coach?"

That earned him a whap with a convenient pillow.

"For a smart guy you can be a real idiot. I'm moving in because your home's been my home for years and there's no practical reason for us to keep two apartments. And mine's great-- love the memories-- but a bit small for two people who might get into each others' hair. Well, you might get into mine. On the other hand, I'm gonna have to send out a search party for yours before I can--"

"Asshole," Phil growled, sending the pillow back at him. Clint fwumped back onto the bed as it hit, laughing. "And what do you think I'm going to do to get into your hair?" 

"Dunno," he grinned. "I've never had enough time alone with you to find out. I'm looking forward to it: see just how domestic I can get before you try to shoot me or I try to shoot you."

"Domestic? Really? Hawkeye, the World's Greatest Burner of Frozen Pizzas?"

"Turning over a new leaf, Phil. Maybe I'll take cooking classes. Gotta keep my man in style, you know."

"Oh, _your_ man, am I now?" Phil said, turning around to look straight at Clint. Clint grinned back.

"Always have been, babe." The shrug he made looked odd from a horizontal position. "And I've been yours." He frowned a little, then Phil found his face abruptly caught between those two huge hands. " _Only_ mine, now, too." He kissed Phil on the end of the growl. "No more sharing."

"You haven't been," Phil told him, more than a little breathless. "Not for a long while." Clint nodded, decisive.

"Figured. Me either. Just didn't want any misunderstandings. Now," Clint was off the bed and upright with a speed that would have made junior agents weep, "unless you think you can get round two ready already, come check my work on the entertainment center. You know I'm useless with wires."

"I remember that one time in Prague where you accidentally made a dud bomb work because you crossed a couple wires you were supposed to be disconnecting."

"Damnit, you are never gonna let me live that down." Clint tossed Phil his pants as he spoke, but he was laughing. "Worked out though, didn't it? If we hadn't had that bomb who knows how much of the city would have been destroyed? As it was, it was just a fire station and a massage parlor. Small potatoes."

"That's what you say now, Clint. You're not the one who had to do the paperwork to deal with all of that. And every time I mentioned that damned massage parlor in the report I could see your snicker in my mind. You're lucky you're cute." 

"Aw, babe," the hands came back to snake around Phil's waist again, preventing him from pulling down the shirt he'd just grabbed, "you know you love me." A fond smile split his face. "And lucky for you, I love you too."

"I--" said Phil. 

And then:

"That's..."

And a moment later:

"But I'd wanted to--"

Clint was laughing at him outright now, like he hadn't just ticked off items one through three on Phil's meticulously planned campaign of attack as if whole thing was just that simple. As if this weren't the very thing that Phil thought they'd never really get to have. As if finally getting what he never thought they'd live to see was something you could just do in a day, and not build towards for weeks, or months or-- oh. 

Or years. 

An entire relationship, in fact.

Phil sat down on the bed.

"Phil? Talk to me baby," Clint's voice swam into his consciousness, and Phil realized Clint must have been trying to get him to respond for a little while.

"I had this plan," Phil said, helpless. "It was a _good_ plan." He stopped and shook his head.

"Oh yeah?" Clint asked, curling an arm around him and sitting next to him on the bed. "Tell me about this plan of yours."

"It was a four part plan," Phil began, and went on to describe points one through three, feeling the blush creep up his face as he did. It seemed, sitting in their bedroom staring at a longbow hanging on the wall and feeling Clint's lazy chuckle in his chest, like such a stupidly cautious, insecure campaign-- he'd made it while disregarding the most basic intelligence. But at the end, Clint just kissed him and said:

"It was a good plan, except I suck at those and you know it. Where would we be if I was any good at plans?”

“I don’t know, you seem to follow the spirit of them, you just go at them ass-backwards.” While he was at it, Phil got himself a grip on the body part in question, and Clint yelped and retaliated. They lost a few moments in an escalating goosing war, finally ending up in some kind of mutual arm-lock and laughing themselves loose.

“I’ve got to just stop trying to plan anything having to do with you.” Arm-locks hadn’t seemed quite so lingeringly painful in the past… well. In the distant past. Phil creaked upwards and pulled Clint up after him.

“Oh, god, don’t,” Clint said as he cracked his neck. “You have no idea how much better I feel knowing you’re sitting in your corner plotting on my behalf. I gotta ask, though, what was the fourth part of the plan gonna be?"

Phil arched an eyebrow at his infuriating, wonderful jackass of a _partner_ and said:

"You know exactly what it was going to be, and the way you've been going I'm shocked you haven't done it already."

"Ah," Clint said, leaning in and kissing Phil as if he had all the time in the world, "I gotta leave you _something_ to do."

"How generous of you," Phil said, glad to find that his deadpan hadn't deserted him entirely. He turned and put his head down on Clint's shoulder and thought he could definitely get used to this new world.

After several minutes he felt Clint begin to fidget.

"Something wrong?" he asked when he caught Clint looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

"You planning on getting on with that fourth part sometime soon?" Clint asked him, glowering a little. 

Phil tilted his head back and howled with laughter.

"In my own time, love," he said when he could breathe again. "In my own time."

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> I can always be found on tumblr [here](http://kat-har.tumblr.com), and I would hug and squeeze and obsessively re-read your comments, if you were to leave them below.


End file.
